


In Good Times and in Bad, in Sickness and in Health

by arboretum



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 05:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17074496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arboretum/pseuds/arboretum
Summary: As if, he thought.As if we aren’t married.  We’re married, aren’t we?





	In Good Times and in Bad, in Sickness and in Health

_Why does she do that?_ he thought, watching her back as she ascended the rolling ladder.   _Why does she have to do that?  Why does she always have to be like this?_

_As if_ , he thought.   _As if we aren’t married.  We’re married, aren’t we?_

_She’s the one who proposed to_ me _.  She’s the one who dragged us to a priest, found one on the spot_ — it had impressed him a lot at the time —  _and made him officiate.  She’s the one who —_

He watched as her slender hand disappeared last into the pod, pulling the lid shut after her, and he waited a few moments.  Then he rolled slowly into the lab and up to the AI pod.  He raised his hand, considered for a beat, then knocked timidly on the metal side.

“Go away.”

“D-doctor Strangelove?”

“Go. Away.”

He didn’t think it was nice to treat your husband this way.  He didn’t think it was nice not to tell him your real name.  Or to call him by a diminutive you’d made up ten years ago, even when he asked you not to.  He supposed it could be a marker of fondness.  He really, really didn’t like that when he’d finally found her and wheedled that skull faced bastard into letting him call her, she’d said curtly, “I’ll come on one condition.”

He didn’t like the condition one bit.  He supposed he should have known from the start that she would be trouble, with a condition like that, but then she’d agreed to marry him —  _him_!  He hadn’t even asked.  That had to mean something, right?

“I just wanted to ask you something,” he said.

“I’m busy.”

“I just—”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Huey, I’m busy, I come in here to think when I need to be alone, and I need to be alone now, so please.  Please.  Leave me alone.  Just leave me.”

He thought about persisting, but he didn’t really want any answers from her anyway.  He was a little afraid of what she’d say.  He rolled away.

At the door he turned back and looked at her.  At the pod.  Its one eye glowed sinister and red in the dark.  “I—” he said.  “I hate that thing.  I hate it.”

Louder, then: “I hate you.  You’re a monster and a, a homewrecker, and we never should have pulled you out of the lake.”

After a few hours she emerged from her cocoon, and Huey saw her in the cafeteria.  She saw him too, made eye contact, and held it for a long unblinking second before turning to talk to someone else.  Unashamed.

Later, weeks later, she did it again — upset about something or another — and Huey was in the room, silently running calculations on Sahelanthropus at his desk, when he heard her knock from inside.

There was a brief rattle, then she knocked again.

A moment, then: “Huey, are you there?”

He sat and watched and listened as she rattled and knocked away inside for quite some time.  She didn’t call his name again.

After a while, he left.


End file.
